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LOUISVILLE, Kentucky: Two Louisville officers were shot during protests on Wednesday (Sept. 24) and a suspect was in custody, police said, after demonstrations broke out in the U.S. city when charges were brought against a Only police officer involved in the fatal March shooting of black woman Breonna Taylor.
The officers’ injuries were “not life threatening” and both were in stable condition and undergoing treatment, Louisville Acting Police Chief Robert Schroeder told reporters.
“We have a suspect in custody,” he said.
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Earlier, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said the two white police officers who shot at Taylor’s apartment will not be prosecuted for their deaths because their use of force during the raid was justified.
A third officer was charged with three counts of senseless endangering, a relatively low-level crime, stemming from the bullets he fired astray at an adjacent apartment in Taylor’s neighbors.
Benjamin Crump, a prominent civil rights attorney representing the Taylor family, denounced the outcome of the grand jury investigation and said it was “outrageous” that none of the three officers involved in the raid was criminally charged with causing the death of Taylor.
Protesters immediately took to the streets chanting “No lives matter until Black lives matter,” marching for hours through Kentucky’s largest city amid sporadic clashes with riot police.
The mayor of the city, which has a population of 600,000, has declared a state of emergency and a curfew at 9:00 p.m., and much of the center is closed to traffic.
Some downtown business owners closed their stores in anticipation of the riots sparked by the grand jury decision.
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Demonstrations lasted until dusk in defiance of the curfew and remained mostly peaceful until several shots were heard amid a skirmish between protesters and heavily armed police, sending members of the crowd running for cover. .
A Reuters reporter at the scene heard crowd shots fired moments after police fired pepper spray and “flash-bang” blasts at protesters.
Law enforcement forces back protesters on September 23, 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. (Photo: Brandon Bell / Getty Images via AFP)
Hours earlier, about a dozen people were arrested in a clash between hundreds of protesters and a group of law enforcement officers in the Highlands neighborhood outside of downtown Louisville.
Several protesters threw bottles of water at the police, who responded by firing pepper balls into the crowd. Fights broke out and some business windows in the area were smashed.
Demonstrations of various sizes protesting the outcome of the Louisville grand jury investigation were also held in several other cities, including New York, Washington, Atlanta, and Chicago.
President Donald Trump said on Twitter that he was praying for the two officers shot Wednesday and had spoken with the Kentucky governor to offer federal assistance.
His Democratic rival in the presidential race, Joe Biden, said the grand jury did not do justice to Taylor, but he was hopeful that the federal investigation into his death would do just that.
“We do not need to wait for the final judgment of that investigation to do more to bring justice to Breonna,” he added.
